Productivity growth requires change management
I’ve been working for decades to help organisations to improve their productivity. And it’s difficult. There’s no denying this, it’s partly the reason why UK productivity growth has been so stagnant over the last 14 or so years.
The reason productivity growth is so hard, is it requires us to find new ways of doing things. Ones that take less human effort.
And so, we need humans to change the way they work, and this requires change management. So, in short, every productivity project is in fact a change management project.
At the bottom of the productivity pyramid, on the people face we have, ‘remove me’, ‘leave me’ and then ‘train me’. We all have people within our organisation who identify with ‘leave me’; meaning leave me please to get on with my job – I’ll do it the way I’ve always done it and I’m very happy and I know what’s expected of me.
The challenge for an organisation seeking to improve its productivity, is that it often can’t leave people working the same way, because the productivity improvements by their very nature need people to work differently.
Part of the change management here is helping people to learn new things.
Learning shouldn’t stop when we leave formal education. If we don't continue to learn we reach a plateau in our lives. We get stuck in a world of "what is" and can struggle to see the possibilities of a world of "what might be."
There is an inextricable link between creativity and learning. Creativity (the generation of new and useful ideas - breakthrough thinking) depends on brain plasticity. In "The Net and the Butterfly" Olivia Fox Cabane & Judah Pollack describe the link between breakthrough thinking and neuroplasticity. "The Higher Our Level of Neuroplasticity, the Higher Our Chances of Breakthroughs". Brain plasticity is in part developed by the creation of new neural networks, created by new experiences and learning. In the course of their research, they asked Astro Teller, head of Google's semi-secret research development facility how he hires people. "I hire the most plastic people I can find," was his response.
In order to increase productivity we need to develop breakthrough ideas and learn new ways of doing things. Unfortunately, many of our organisations are populated by ‘leave me’ employees, who seem to have little desire to learn new things. If our change projects are to be successful, we need to somehow find ways to move them up the ladder until they identify with ‘train me’. Alternatively, they will ultimately become ‘remove me’ employees and will need to be made available to the market.
Learning is leverage. If you want to increase team productivity, encourage a love of learning. According to the Harvard Business Review, learning is a learned behaviour, meaning we can all get better at getting better. Some practical ways you can achieve this include:
set aside time each week or month for learning
implement a learning lunch culture to share learning throughout the team
setup up an office book club and select books recommended by others
work with a coach or mentor
challenge staff to learn something new within their personal development objectives